Fiction

Writing fiction is a way of thinking.

Thinking through stories—through character, plot, place, and time—carries writer and reader beneath received narratives into the truer complexity of things. And the sense of transportation we experience within true fictions can free reader and writer from the jail of the sole self. That’s why even the saddest stories cheer me up; even tragedy well-told brings the reader into human connections. And because good stories defy formula, they have the capacity to surprise—to remind us that the world is full; that history does more than repeat itself; and that our lives, therefore, can be large, open, and renewed.

Robert Schultz’s fiction includes The Madhouse Nudes, a novel, and short stories that have appeared in The Hudson Review and The Virginia Quarterly Review. His second novel, a work in progress, is titled How the Future Was.

When the painter John Ordway moves from New York to a small Iowa town and hires two local women as models, his work and life deepen and complicate in unforeseen ways, probing the question: What does it mean for a man to see a woman truly?